


Maybe, If I Close My Eyes.

by withoutwords



Category: Teen Wolf (TV) RPF
Genre: Angst, Arguably OOC, Friends With Benefits, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Infidelity, M/M, Not A Happy Ending, Very Mild Drug Use, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 12:38:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2468468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withoutwords/pseuds/withoutwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things that happen, don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe, If I Close My Eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not in chronological order, and there is not much in the way of plot. If that doesn’t bother you, please read on!
> 
> This is a fake story about people who exist. There is no truth, and no affiliation.

The truth is: Dylan O’Brien is a good guy. He’s responsible, and concerned, and as much as he cackles when Posey tries to light his farts with a large sized matchstick, he will shoulder your problems for as long as you need, sit and listen and respect it. 

Dylan O’Brien is a good guy, and everyone who meets him says it, and everyone who knows him says it with a smirk, a little something at the edge. He’s a good guy but he’s also good at a lot of things.

Evasion, and acting, and being the thing he needs to be and not always the things that he is.

“Just say it,” Tyler told him once, because Tyler is always just the one thing. The red, bleeding heart stained on his sleeve and the unmasked smile and _this_ : his fingers curled around that pale and sinewy wrist, pulling. “I can take it.”

“I don’t think you can,” Dylan had said, because he would always forget that Tyler was the adult here, that Dylan had barely rolled out of his teens, his hair still mussed the wrong way and his clothes still a little too small for him. “I could say it, and I could break your heart.”

Tyler pulled Dylan’s hand to rest it on his chest, repeated, _say it_ , and Dylan grinned at him, sly, admitted, “Okay, okay, I totally talked shit about you to Tan after the Dodgers pitch, alright?” and Tyler had got him in a head lock, heart beating on.

*

Dylan had gotten drunk once – Dylan got drunk a lot, but not maudlin, not self deprecating, never to Tyler – and asked him, “Who do you like better, me or Stiles?” which should not have been as hard to answer as it was. Dylan was once his roommate; is his colleague and his friend. Stiles was nothing without Dylan. 

Except Dylan had shades, and layers like his costume; shirt after shirt after shirt and never unravelling, never coming off. Stiles was loud and flailing and loyal to the end, two dimensional and easy to read. Dylan – Dylan was jokes when you didn’t expect them, quiet and self-effacing. He would zone out for two minutes scrutinising their director and then be singing _Run The World_ half an hour later while the make up girls tried to give him a tan.

“Can I have some kind of hypothetical scenario immunity?” 

“The fact you _can’t_ answer is basically _the_ answer, asshole.”

Dylan tried to push off from his place on the sofa, and Tyler had pulled him back and they wound up on the floor in a wrestling position Posey had shown him, shirts rucked up to their shoulders and laughing. “Of course I like you better,” Tyler had told him, Dylan scrambling to cover his body, flush and embarrassed. 

“Is it because Stiles has no sense of fashion and lacks a certain finesse?”

“No,” Tyler said, because he loved all those things. “It’s because Stiles probably can’t poach chicken the way you do. Seriously, it’s like an art form.”

Dylan laughed and stepped on Tyler’s guts as he walked out.

*

It was summer the first time it happened, sweat like a second skin and Dylan’s lips dry when he pressed them against Tyler’s. The music was so loud the bass speared through the bottom of his feet; hit his chest like a freight train, water rushing in his ears. They were just dancing, is the thing; Dylan’s fingers in Tyler’s pocket and their friends at their backs.

They were only dancing, but Dylan had his mouth open, just, and his throat was bared and Tyler kissed him back.

*

Dylan twisted drumsticks through his long spindly fingers the same way Tyler read a baseball field; with ease. He tapped cutlery and trainers and empty water bottles against any flat surface he could find until someone – usually Holland – barked at him to stop. It took Tyler a while to realise it wasn’t juvenile, not a Stiles “ADD” Stilinski -esque thing. It was just Dylan, and Dylan didn’t even know he was doing it.

“It’s like those videos, dude, it was my escape,” Dylan told him, and he didn’t say all the things Tyler knew by osmosis, the things he could feel. That Dylan was bullied, called names, maybe pushed around a little; that Dylan had music and movies and the movies won out. 

Dylan drummed his feelings out the way Tyler pitched a ball against the side of his trailer; it’s in their bones.

*

Tyler caught Dylan crying in a plush little hotel in Europe, sitting on his balcony with his phone pressed against his knee and his emotion pressed against his throat. Tight and bobbing with the force, cheeks flushed and lashes wet. Tyler had seen Dylan so tired he couldn’t stand upright, so angry he couldn’t see straight. This was new, and almost too much to bear. 

“Jesus, man,” Dylan had said, sucking in a wet breath and wiping his face with the back of his hand. “Don’t – do you mind?”

“Sorry – uh,” Tyler hovered by the door. “It’s just the others are headed out for drinks and I thought I’d come get you. Sorry. Do you want Posey or ...?”

“No. I just – I was on the phone to my Mom and Dad, I just ... can you give me a minute?”

“Yeah, of course. Do you need ...?”

“Hoechlin, for fucks sake, it’s just sadness,” Dylan had scoffed, up on his feet and rampaging through to the room. “It’s not leprosy, you can’t _catch it_.”

Tyler had looked at Dylan standing there, his breathing uneven and his body jittering and wished that he could protest. Because it was maybe one of the worst things he’d ever seen. “I just don’t want to leave until I know you’re okay.”

Dylan had stopped, paused like film, like he needed some sort of prompt to get him going again. Then he fell onto the bed, his head in his hands and said, “I’m just homesick, man, I don’t know why I ...”

Tyler had sat next to him, put an arm around his shoulders, and pretended he couldn’t hear the quiet sniffling.

*

Another time it happened they both had commitments, were both in love with other people. They were a little baked, and warm, and Tyler was playing with Dylan’s hands and not realising until Dylan put his fingers in Tyler’s mouth. Long and musky and going deep until they were replaced with Dylan’s tongue, rough.

“Just, keep,” Dylan had gasped, pushing Tyler onto his back, pushing and pushy.

Tyler kept. 

*

They fought a few times, on a Sunday, at lunch because Tyler was too polite to a waiter who had apparently been a ‘total douchebag, Hoech, why do you put up with that shit?’ and on a week day because Dylan and Posey kept fucking around and Tyler was running on three hours sleep.  
They fought mostly about the work; about wanting to have a bigger say in it, about knowing their characters more than the writers, and being stifled. They argued because Dylan wanted to go in, guns blazing, and let them have it but Tyler thought he knew better.

“You don’t want that reputation, Dyl, you’re – you’ve got too much going for you.”

“What reputation?”

“You don’t want to be the actor who causes trouble and questions everything, okay? Just do what they say and you’ll be ... you’re gonna be huge.”

Dylan looked as though he’d eaten something bad for lunch. “That is the worst fucking thing I have ever head you say, Hoech, fuck.”

“You’re young - ”

“Oh, fuck off _I’m young_. You think I don’t know that a guy who was in love with a girl for ten years isn’t going to want to hook up with a crazy chick in an insane asylum while a demon attacks his brain? You think I’m too young to get that?”

Tyler had felt himself smirk more than he had intended to do it, and then suddenly he was on the floor laughing and Dylan was pretending to kick him in the ass, shouting, “You don’t understand me, I hate you so much.”

*

Tyler grew up and got big in the water; along the coast and through the rivers and sliding down the hills at his family home when the rain was heavy. Back when. He drank gallons of water, bathed in it and showered in it and did stupid ass stunts in it that made him stand back and realise the enormity of what he was doing.

Dylan looked at a swimming pool and swore.

“We don’t - ” Tyler had tried to say around Dylan’s protests, because bull shit they had to do it in the deep end, it wasn’t 1959, _they had computers_. “Dyl, seriously,”

“It’ll be fine, man, I’ll – please don’t make a big deal out of this.”

They had gone back to the pool, later, after cut, wrap and _good work giving the fans what they want_. Dylan had waded his feet in it while Tyler did his laps; watching the ripple of it like he had been thinking of getting back in. 

Dylan had said, “I don’t want to drown in this,” quiet and serious and they both knew he wasn’t talking about the pool.

“You won’t, man,” Tyler had promised. “We won’t let you.”

*

Tyler can’t see a bagel, smell fresh tuna or hear Dylan say, ‘well one time,’ without smiling.

That’s his own story to keep.

*

They got careless, nearing the end. Forgot to lock a door, or take a call, and if the intrusion had been quiet they wouldn’t have gotten away with it. Later, after hiding the evidence, Dylan was furious and Tyler was scared and they’d become the worst versions of themselves, spitting with their fury and trying to catch their breath.

“I’m not,” Dylan had started to say, still red in the face and stuttering over his words like he’s forgotten his lines. “I really like you, man-“

“I like you too-“

“But this isn’t - ”

“I know,” (and he did, he’d thought it all. It isn’t what I want for him, it isn’t worth the risk, It isn’t _right_.)

Dylan kept a few baseball mitts and a ball just for them, just to throw it around when things got bad enough that words weren’t working. Tyler picked it up, rolled it around in his hands and Dylan said,

“Put it down, dude. Just – come here.” 

*

Tyler wondered, sometimes, if certain ships had sailed. If he would ramble from TV series to TV series, playing secondary roles and keeping fit. He loved it, the way people love Sundays, and coffee breaks, like coming home; but he loved it in a settling way, because he couldn’t have baseball.

Dylan’s face was everywhere, and he was ‘making it’, so what had Tyler made, then?

“What do you think of when you think of me?” Tyler asked Dylan, on a day that was nice and quiet and Dylan was a million miles away with Will and Kaya and the new cast of friends he would now have for life.

“Baseball. Weird smile.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” Dylan had started, then became muffled and broken shouting something to someone _I told you not to – oh my god you actually_ – returned laughing. “Sorry, what are we talking about?”

“Acting.”

“Oh. I thought it was baseball.”

“I don’t have baseball. So now I’m acting.” Tyler had bitten down on a nail. A learned habit. “But if I’m _acting_ , what are _you_ doing?”

“Uh. We’re making something English and weird to eat, dude. Bubbly something.” 

Tyler had smiled, and breathed out. “Dyl.”

“Yeah?”

“Your movie looks amazing.”

*

Dylan had said something, just the one time. He had said, “They’re not the fantasy,” and motioned to his half-read script, another innuendo laden episode. “ _We’re_ the fantasy.” 

Tyler never asked him to elaborate.

*

There was a kiss out on the sand at Ian’s, the noise of the party filtering down to them as they found their place against each other, rivets. Tyler had forgotten what day it was, or where they were going to be tomorrow; he’d forgotten if Dylan was still seeing that girl, or if he should close his fists and _move_. 

It was open mouthed and lingering and it was leading to more; to his dick out and Dylan’s hand and the beautiful rutting and that beautiful face, Tyler taking a bite out of it, just below his ear.

“Hoech – Ty – Jesus,” and they’d both come all over Dylan and they’d both gone back to the party like normal, like the actors they were.

*

They had hung back after that first audition, exchanged numbers and knowing smirks. This was it, _they_ were it.

Everything was going to change.

*

The truth is: Dylan O’Brien is a good guy. Tyler is too, discounting the shit he pulled on his brothers when he was a kid and that one time he broke up with a girl via text message because he was a little bit afraid of her. They’re both good guys, and good at certain things; at knowing what they want and how to get it.

They were just never very good at this:

“I don’t know when I’ll be back around,” Dylan says as he puts his shoes on, his hip against the front door. “I have that project with Max in Italy and then – I have - ”

“I’m going to be pretty busy, too,” Tyler says, because he just wants to stop talking about it, he just wants to stop.

“Right, well,” Dylan grabs his hands, pulls him in for a hug that doesn’t quite reach, that makes Tyler want to push him away and pull him close all in one moment.

They’re good guys but were never good for (to) each other.

“See ya.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr.](http://thefancyspin.tumblr.com)


End file.
